1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique providing an input supporting function that is appropriate when hand-written characters and symbols written in an electronic information board apparatus are recognized as characters.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, in conferences held in companies, educational institutes, administrative organizations, and the like, electronic black boards on which a background image is displayed on a display, and a user can draw a stroke image of a character, a number, a diagram, and the like on the background image are used.
As an example of such an electronic black board, in Japanese Patent No. 5625615, a technique having an object to make it possible to display both hand-written contents and continuously-displayed contents without degrading the visibility of both the contents when a hand-writing input is made on the constantly-displayed contents displayed on the front-most face of an electronic information board apparatus has been disclosed in which a search for a blank area capable of housing the display contents is performed based on the size of the display contents, the search size is decreased in a case where the search is not successful, the decreasing of the size is repeated until a search succeeds, and the display contents are moved to a found blank area so as to be displayed therein.
However, in a conventional electronic black board, a stroke image of a text, a symbol, or the like written on the display screen by a user using his hand cannot be converted to a text directly using an OCR recognition process.
For this reason, it is conceivable to use an OCR function that is supported as a standard in Windows (registered trademark) 7 that is one of operating systems OS mounted in computer systems by using a computer apparatus connected to the electronic black board.
However, since being capable of editing, storing, and reading a stroke image that is directly written by a user using his hand on the screen are significant features of the electronic black board, it takes time to execute OCR input through a tablet PC input panel mounted in a tablet PC connected to the electronic black board, and thus, there is a problem in that user's ease of use is lowered.
In addition, in a case where a plurality of characters, symbols, and/or the like are written on an electronic black board using the hand, depending on a user who has written them, there is a case where the sizes of characters are not uniform or a case where the direction of the character string is upward or downward. For this reason, when character recognition of such an image is executed, it is supposed that the recognition accuracy decrease.
Thus, when character recognition of a stroke image of a character, a symbol, or the like written on the screen of an electronic black board by using the hand is executed so as to convert to a text, there is an earnest desire for the provision of a support function capable of improving the ease of use at the time of handwriting and improving the input accuracy of a stroke image that is a target for the character recognition.